Remnants

Have you ever wondered about the silence? What goes on? Deep in places where we dare not go even on a bright afternoon? In the shadows beneath a canopy of trees in the uncharted center of a forest or in caves where even the air can't escape being captured by an echo? This is where you'll find yourself. Cliché, yes, but the truth is well-hidden because of this universal notion. A starting point. Yourself. That is what you'll find. Not the astrology, crystals and patchouli-masked pot-scented rug sweaters and phony self-glorifying, prideful and arrogant "spiritualism" where virtues are weaponized to judge and attack others. Not that. I mean your own self. This is why these nooks are scary. These hidden places don't arouse fright in us because of what is unknown that may lurk within them but because of the unknown that rests hidden in the back of our collective minds. Those unknowable things we conjure up when we transition from dream to dream, those fleeting eternities wherein we find our pleasures and pains mixed as one. Where all of us wade through without memory every night when we "forgive and forget" or "live, laugh, love" or--my favorite--"keep calm and carry on". Cute. Blissful to think any thought or feeling can be destroyed or forgotten. Blissful and naive indeed. Those of us that fear solitude fear themselves the most because it's in these very moments that we're expected to reflect on ourselves. Call it meditation, call it prayer or call it brooding. The silence does not judge and is always willing to lend an ear. The silence knows it all. They say the world won't end with a bang but a whimper and I can say for sure that it will. Without us, even without the world, silence was here before and it will be here after. The mute observer of the universe, the one cursed to watch it all. So if you ever want to know yourself, find somewhere you can be alone and simply listen but don't be afraid of what you might run across in the silence.